Flu Season
by kumiya
Summary: Link gets the flu. Good thing Yeto and Yeta are there to take care of him!


**Title: Flu Season**

 **Summary: Link gets the flu. Good thing Yeto and Yeta are there to take care of him! [Crack]**

* * *

The first thing Link registered was the giant, meaty finger barreling into his cheek over and over like a battering ram. He wanted to swat it away and drop back into the darkness of sleep, but for some reason his arms felt like they weighed five hundred pounds and were made of frozen butter. He tried to roll over, but he was imprisoned in a cocoon of quilts. He felt like a mummy—a mummy that was burning in a funeral pyre because by Goddesses he was on fire! Link summoned all his strength and cracked open one eye. Yeto hulked over him in all of his hairy glory.

"Ah!" he boomed. "Friend Link awake at last. Here, Yeto help." The yeti used two of his giant fingers and plucked Link's other eye open for him, pulling far enough to expose the pink flesh underneath before dropping the lids in place. Link saw that he was in a large bed. The room glowed with the light of a crackling fireplace, and through a window shone a winter wonderland. However, everything was slowly going blurry; sleep was rising up to claim him…

"Not so fast!" Yeto chuckled, peeling back Link's drooping lids. "Doctor Yeto want Link say 'Aaaah.'"

"Uhhh…h…h..." Link groaned like a dying horse.

"HO HO HAH!" Yeto laughed, his voice punching cleanf through Link's ear drums. Link shut his eyes and prayed for death.

0000-0000

Eons later, a wooden spoon shoved its way into Link's mouth. Link tasted sweet pumpkin and creamy tomato—but the spoon kept going and rammed into the back of his throat. Link jerked awake, throwing up all over the quilt. There hadn't been much in his stomach, but it was dripping and chunky and smelled like acid. He wrinkled his nose and blinked to clear his vision.

Yeta gathered up the soiled blanket. "No worry, Friend Link. Yeta wash this." She stowed it in the laundry basket and waddled back to the bedside. She spooned some more soup and, after blowing on it, sent it on a straight course for Link's mouth. Link would have eagerly opened up, but he realized that Yeta was using a yeti-sized spoon to feed her Link-sized patient. Link lurched to the side, throwing himself out of the path of soupy suffocation. However, his aching body could move no faster than a snail, turning his great escape into a sluggish flop across the pillows. Yeta simply straightened him and poured the spoon's contents all over his face.

0000-0000

A few more eons later, Link was awoken by a chill racing across his body. Shivering, he saw that the cocoon had been unraveled and that he was now sitting on the bathroom floor. A whoosh of white—cotton fabric wrapped around his face, cutting off his air until Yeto yanked the nightdress (embellished with traditional yeti tribal patterns) off his head. The Hylian crossed his arms over his chest, curling into his nakedness. The nearby stove was giving off waves of heat. Link tried to waddle towards it.

Above him, Yeto laughed thunderously, "Ho ho! Friend Link cold? Here!" The yeti scooped Link up and dropped him in a steaming bath.

Link flailed—the tub felt like a dark, wide ocean, the water like fire on his skin. However, the heat began seeping into his muscles, filling every inch of him with a warm languorousness. His natural buoyancy brought him to the surface, where he floated until Yeto grabbed him and hung him over the side of the tub. The yeti began to dump soap in the water, stirring the bath with a ladle until it was frothy. Great clouds of bubbles floated by like small islands. Link sucked steam through his nose, letting the warmth flow through him, but his smile vanished when a hand grabbed his shoulder.

"Friend Link need wash now!" said Yeto.

Before Link could cry out, a huge, shampoo-covered hand smacked down on his head and began mushing the soap into his hair. His head rolled around and around, his eyes bulging, his mouth taking in water. The world of the tub spun, water and soap spiraling together in a blue-white bubbly vertigo. The water was dizzyingly hot; nausea rose within him, pushing against his lungs, up his throat.

By a stroke of mercy, the hand lifted and a bucketful of warm water rained down on him. Link coughed and sputtered, drooping in Yeto's grip.

"HO HO HAH!" Yeto laughed.

0000-0000

It was now or never. Yeta had just finished pouring soup on Link's face for the second time that day. As soon as she waddled away, the door swinging shut, Link willed his deadened limbs to move. Slowly, he half-wriggled and half-heaved his way out of the covers and towards the edge of the bed. The floor lay far beneath him, a distant drop. Link mumbled a quick prayer and pushed himself over, his hands gripping the bedsheets. The quilts slowed his fall, allowing him to hit the floor with a soft _fwump_.

Now, there was only a hundred feet between him and the door. Link mustered himself onto his hands and knees and plodded, one step at a time, towards his goal. No sooner had he begun did the world being to sway. His throat burned; each breath was like a dry, cold wind rattling in his lungs. His arms began to shake, ready to give way. Each nudge forward seemed like its own endeavor. The seconds felt like minutes, the minutes like hours. He could have lived his whole life in the time it took to pass the armchair.

At last, his head conked into something solid. Link's nose scraped the wooden door as hooked up; the bronze knob hung high above him, sparkling like a tease.

Link felt a part of his soul shrivel up. Here was freedom, so close yet so far. Suddenly, the door swung open—Yeta stood behind it, a damp washcloth in hand. She looked down at Link in surprise. The Hylian dropped back on his haunches, staring up at her with a face that cried "Why?"

"Friend Link bad! Bad!" said Yeta, shaking the washcloth at him. Link hung his head in despair. Yeta wasn't big enough to pick Link up like her husband could, so Link was dragged back to his prison of quilts.

0000-0000

Night fell, and both yetis returned to the bedroom. The two of them together promised double the pain and humiliation. Link tried to sigh, but the breath stuttered in his throat, trapped by a web of phlegm.

The yetis rolled Link into the middle of the bed and then climbed in themselves. They squished together, their massive bodies crushing the breath out of Link's lungs. Link thrashed (which was really a weak wriggling of his limbs) until the yetis took notice and gave him a pocket of air.

"Friend Link happy now, ya?" said Yeto. Link screwed his face into the meanest glare he could muster, but the yeti didn't see it because he was looking at his wife. "Wife Yeta take good care of Friend Link, ya?" He gave Yeta a loving smile.

"Oh, no!" said Yeta, blushing. "Husband Yeto take best care of Friend Link."

"Oh, Wife Yeta so beautiful like swan!"

"Oh, Husband Yeto so sweet like apple!"

They leaned into each other and nuzzled. A flurry of hearts fountained from them, raining all over the bed. Link's body gave a violent jerk, every instinct in him calling, _screaming_ , for him to rise up and grab one. Yet no matter how he wiggled and writhed, he was trapped between the two lovebirds. Link's eyes began to sting. This was part of their sick game—to force him to swelter in their infernal, hairy sandwich while health lay an inch beyond.

Yet one heart drifted close, landing on the lip of his air pocket. It glowed softly, luscious and red as a fruit. Link reached, sweat sliding down his brow. He reached, cursing his short arms. He reached, his fingers feeling like they were about to shoot out of his sockets, reached until his nail scratched the heart over the edge and into his palm.

Link snatched it with a feral hunger. Energy surged through him. Another heart drifted close, and this time Link was able to rise up and squeeze his hand through the hole. Then he was pushing his head through, and next he wormed his whole body out onto the bed. He grabbed a heart, and another, and another. At last, when the room was once again orderly, Link stood strong and healthy at the doorway, the yetis fast asleep in their bed.

Link whooped with joy. He sprinted out of the bedroom, out of the mansion and into the snow. He threw his arms into the air, relishing the cold on his face and the strength of his body. He ran with such joyous abandon that he totally forgot he was wearing nothing but a nightdress. Only when he was miles from the yeti mansion did he feel the frigid draft, the ice beneath his bare feet. By then, a storm was whipping across the mountaintop, covering his tracks and turning the horizon into a blank slate of gray.

Teeth chattering and limbs numb, Link dug a ranger hole at the foot of a tree and huddled there for rest of the night.

The next morning, Yeto found him, blue and frosted over. It was exactly where he had first found Link. But now instead of the flu, he had hypothermia.

"Friend Link like this tree, ya?" Yeto chuckled. "HO HO HAH!"

* * *

 **A/N: Is this a holiday fic? HO HO HAH HO!**


End file.
